Thursday, April 21, 2005  

Taters

There's a woman who rides my bus in the evening. She's small and chunky, with wild black hair and a perpetual sneer. She never takes off her sunglasses and from the time she gets on at Wellington until the time she gets off in the Fells, she scribbles furiously in a tiny little notebook. Her pale cheeks flush as she writes, and try as I might, I can't quite catch a glimpse of the page. There's something incredibly attractive about this. I've invented a story where she's a passionate young writer, just trying to get that first novel out of her head and onto the page. It's sexy to watch her wail away at her words, oblivious to my prying eyes.

Then yesterday she dropped her notebook. I practically broke my back scooping it up so I could grab a peek. Ready? Lists of office supplies. Endless lists of office supplies. Tape. Stapler. Paper clips. String. Over and over and over and over. Who even uses string?

I thought she was sexy, and it turns out she was crazy.

This is, as it turns out, my dating history in a sentence. I once dated a woman with perfect sculpted breasts and a breathtaking ass who was so batshit loony that my German Shepherd jumped through a plate glass window to get away from her.

Then there was the woman who would only have sex if Mötley Cruë's Angela was playing, because her name was Angela. That one also turned out to be what the courts call an"emancipated minor." She neglected to tell me that, of course, until we'd listened to Angela three times. I jumped out the window that time.

How I made it to matrimony without a knife in the kidney or an "accidental" pregnancy, I'll never know. But here I am, and now I'm so married and boring that last night, while my wife and kids were out of town, leaving me to my own, evil ways, I went so crazy as to drink three whole beers and eat tater tots for dinner. Tater tots, motherfuckers! Sure, there was a point in my life when I would have used a night of freedom to gobble some LSD or drink a fifth of bourbon before going out to bump into yuppies and try to talk their dates into handjobs, but do you know how much goddamn cholesterol is in just one single tot? FOUR MILLION GRAMS. And I had at least fifteen of them.

I have another night to kill tonight. I figure I'll polish off the rest of the sixer, just for symmetry's sake, and then I'll either go to a movie that my wife wouldn't want to see (which is pretty much all of them that aren't in French) or watch Matt Clement and his Amish little beard pitch against the golems and RoboCops of the Baltimore Orioles' lineup. If anyone has any other suggestions for madcap adventures, I'm all ears.

Only one show to promote this weekend. I'll be at Dick Doherty?s Comedy Escape at the Mountainview Grand Resort and Spa in Whitefield, New Hampshire. Comedy at a place that looks like the hotel in The Shining? You betcha. This is a hell of a comedy club, and I'm not sure why. But the shows here are always packed and fantastic. Plus, they give me free steak and whisky, which are to my comedy what spinach is to Popeye's fistfights. I know my readership ain't exactly the sort that hangs out in luxury resorts, but if you're close, you should try to make this one. The tater tots are on me.